A team of WHO experts visited on Friday (Jan. 29) one of the first hospitals to admit patients at the beginning of the outbreak in Wuhan, the Hubei Provincial Hospital for Integrative Medicine in Wuhan’s Jianghan District.
Zhang Jixian, head of the hospital’s respiratory and critical care medicine department, was the first to make a judgment about the New coronavirus outbreak in late 2019 and was the first to report it to his superiors, Chinese official media said. Zhang Jixian discovered the coronavirus was a new infectious disease, unlike the previously identified virus that causes typical pneumonia, after performing a CT examination on a pair of elderly people.
The first site visit was extremely important,” tweeted Peter Daszak, a member of the WHO expert panel. We went to the hospital treating the case initially designated as a new coronavirus case, met with clinicians and other staff working on the front line and had open discussions about exactly what they were doing.”
WHO said that “as the study team followed the science in their work, all hypotheses were discussed” and that “they should receive the support, access and data they need.” WHO also said that the team of experts will interview some patients during the investigation.
The WHO team of experts wrapped up a two-week quarantine period Thursday after they arrived in China. They plan to stay in Wuhan for two weeks to prepare for visits to laboratories, wildlife markets and relevant hospitals. The outbreak in Wuhan, which began in late 2019, was the earliest in the world.
The experts are preparing to visit the South China Seafood Market, the central location of the outbreak in Wuhan, the Wuhan Institute of Virus Research, and some laboratories at the Wuhan CDC, WHO said.
There are several hypotheses about the source of the virus, the most important of which is that the pandemic was caused by a leak at a government laboratory in Wuhan. Some experts believe that the Wuhan Institute of Virus Research may have been one of the sites that caused the leak. This institute began research on coronaviruses after the 2003 Sars outbreak and has created an archive of genetic information on the virus.
The WHO team’s trip to China has arguably been a difficult one, with the trip repeatedly delayed by the Chinese side, concerns about the experts’ access to key sites, a heated debate between China and the United States over China’s concealment of the truth about the outbreak and the source of the virus, and an ongoing debate between WHO and China over whether Chinese experts should lead the first phase of the investigation.
Mike Ryan, WHO’s emergency chief, said earlier this month that the organization did not want outsiders to have too high expectations for the investigation. “There is no guarantee that (the investigation will yield) answers,” he said.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said Friday that the WHO and Chinese experts are working together to trace the source of the virus. He stressed the operation was not an investigation.
Zhao Lijian said, “What I would like to emphasize is that this is an exchange and cooperation between WHO international experts and Chinese experts in relevant fields on the tracing of the new coronavirus, part of a global study, not an investigation.”
Zhao Lijian though said that the determination of the source of the virus is a scientific issue and needs to wait for the results of the scientists’ investigation and research. But China’s position on the issue is very clear: The outbreak was in many parts of the world before the Wuhan outbreak. China’s official media has continually stated that China is also a victim of the new coronavirus and that the virus in China came from the United States, Italy, Spain, and possibly from frozen Food imported from China. However, China has not provided any authoritative evidence.
Recent Comments